A record of my accomplishments on the way to becomming a cheddar monk master.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The anguish of defeat

For Captain Kirk, it was the Kobayashi Maru. for Luke Skywalker, it was the tree on Dagobah, for Dylan Hunt, it was the black hole. For every hero, there is an unconquerable foe. A point in their career where they must accept that some things in the universe are not achievable, and accepting defeat and moving on is the only option no matter how painful.

For this Cheddar monk, it was not alien environments, feats of engineering, or battling great armies that has done me in. Nay, it was a mere confection that has brought me to my knees.A simple task, or so I thought, Create Chocolate dice...child's play, simple sweets, a novelty below the skills of one with such lofty goals such as I.Alas, it was not to be. While my plans were near perfect, the results were less than envisioned.

I started off with the finest ingredients and tools.High quality dark chocolate, the finest of synthetic fibre brushes, Laser cheese knife, and assorted confectioners buttons and chips.

Inspecting the chocolate showed quality workmanship in the raw product along with care in packaging. The regular not quite square divisions of chocolate, lovingly crafted just called to my creative side.

Carefully separating the pieces with a kitchen Laser knife, and paring the beveled edges square, then crafting the individual pieces in to a (near) perfect cube and welding the pieced together with melted chocolate provided the foundation for the dice. The micro fractures where the pieces did not quite fit together, were filled with a 70% cocoa dark chocolate slightly softened with a drop of olive oil.

(Base Cube seen with Cheese knife for scale)

The final step was to apply the `dots' of the die, which consisted of white chocolate chips fastened with a glue made from confectioners sugar then refrigerated until hardened.

The dots seem to have migrated during the process, I believe the cause of this to be a combination of planetary axial tilt, continental drift, and a recent Earth quake in South America.

The results, some what less than spectacular, were sufficient to cast a saving throw of five.Perhaps next time I will be more successful if I Stay away from the dark (chocolate) side.

alternatively, melt the chocolate and set it in square ice-cube trays.(or moulds...)the numbers can be inscribed with a heated metal wire or needle or skewer (or a fork...y'know, If'n y'all want to be fancy)